I probably have over £10,000 in fake currency in my home, in a mixture of Monopoly money and the kids ‘bank of toyland’ stuff.

What, you wouldn’t call that fake money? Neither would I, as it happens. I’d call it ‘toy money’. I’d only refer to it as ‘fake’ or ‘counterfeit’ if I believed that there was an intention to pass it off as real money somewhere down the line.

Which is why I was surprised to see such a big fuss made in the Newcastle Evening Chronicle over notes with, instead of the Queen’s head, images of Harry Potter characters, Simpsons characters and Newcastle United players, along with the words ‘Bank of England’ being replaced by ‘Bank of Hogwarts’, ‘Bank of Springfield’ or ‘Bank of Solano.

…Hundreds of fake £20 notes have been seized from a car-boot sale.

Newcastle Evening Chronicle, 2 Aug 2007

There was no suggestion that these notes were created with any intention of fraudulent use: indeed the cartoon character motif would rather suggest the opposite. There was no suggestion that any of the anti-fraud mechanisms (metal strip through the paper, water mark, ink that rubs off in certain places or raised inks) were used anywhere at all.

It’s toy money, plain and simple.

So why the Evening Chronicle find it noteworthy that they:

…were changing hands for as little as 20p eachNewcastle Evening Chronicle, 2 Aug 2007

“As little as 20p”? As little as 20p? How much would they pay for toy money, then?

I’d suggest 20p is quite a realistic figure: I’d not pay that for a single ‘monopoly’ note, but for a joke note with Bart Simpson or a Newcastle player on it that looked sufficiently entertaining, maybe.

Of course, what has been suggested is that the reverse side looks more realistic, and so a note folded in half might surreptitiously be used in payment for something providing the person receiving the note didn’t check it and so on. That’s maybe true. It’s not real money but, on one side, it does look like genuine money. Someone sufficiently daft or half-asleep might be taken in.

Despite the big fuss about it being ‘fake currency’, it turns out that the stuff has actually been seized because it is (probably rightly) suspected that copyright images are being used without the appropriate permission. This I can accept: it seems a bit of a shame that a relatively harmless bit of fun like this has to be stamped down on, but I’m sure the companies who own those various image rights would back the action 100%.

But it is not, and never has been “fake money”. It’s toy money, and if that’s illegal, then I’m wondering whether I should ring Crimestoppers to give an anonymous tip-off that Toys R’ Us apparently have vast stocks of fake money, all packaged up inside so-called ‘board games’…